The works is indeed a technical tour de force and your explanation is very nicely done too. Great work.

Eric, while things like Schizophrenia may be looked at as qualitative variables (cases vs controls) a lot of the studies are actually done with quantitative variables (height, BMI, Blood glucose, blood pressure, fasting insulin and so on). Even diseases like bipolar disorder may be investigated not as cases vs controls but as quantitative variables (scores on psychological tests) though I am not familiar with that literature.

There seems to be a common notion that women are more likely to believe in new-age woo than men, but I am not sure this has ever been confirmed in a well conducted study. Without taking this TOO seriously, I am going to propose that the real difference between men and women is that women are more "practical" and less likely to go against whatever notions the community has sort of united around. I think women are more likely to go along with commonly accepted notions like religion, astrology, environmentalism or new-agism, rather than becoming all confrontational and arguing for hours about whether this is bullshit or not. Conversely, when push comes to shove, they are also less likely to hold on to these beliefs as if these beliefs are more important than the health of the individuals and community that hold those beliefs. I am sure this half-baked theory has been put in more rigorous form somewhere and look forward to someone providing a reference....

Some anecdotal data: Out of the 5 or so Iranians that I know in the US, only one really calls herself Muslim. One likes to say Zoroastrian though he was born Muslim. One is Bahai, though also born Muslim, one is jewish and was born jewish and the others prefer no religion. So yes, I think this poll may be correct and your guess that some of these are Iranians who were identified as Muslim in Iran but who have since opted out is also correct.

to continue with anecdotes, the one with no religion is married to a Roman Catholic wife and his son, raised Catholic, has suddenly decided to "become Muslim"...so this may not be the end of the story!

I dont know how things look south of the Manson-Nixon line, but on the coasts the US is fast on its way to becoming the most polyglot nation on earth. And I have a theory that this fact alone guarantees American success in the next 50 years, the considerable drag of past racist attitudes and newer left-wing moral panic and ignorant bullshit notwithstanding.

True, Polyglot was the wrong word. Brazil is pretty mixed too, but I think California may give them a run for their money.....

I generally agree with Taube that the whole "low fat" crusade was based on opinion, not scientific evidence, but I dont think its possible to blame everything on carbs, or at least, not on some kind of national switch to eating carbs. First of all, the actual decrease in fat intake is not that great. Most obese people are still eating a good deal of fat. The kind of low fat diet recommended by low fat fanatics is rarely followed by the general population. Some other factors may also have played a role, like the increased consumption of soft drinks sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. But the bottom line is, we really dont understand why well fed americans in the last 20 years have become fatter than well fed americans of the fifties or sixties. It could be more carbs, it could be more fructose, it could be more screen-time, it could even be the delayed effect of being a generation whose PARENTS and grandparents were well fed...and its probably all of the above. The so-called "epidemic" may also be plateauing, just as the obesity prevention industry gets into high gear and starts collecting new taxes and imposing new restrictions on mostly healthy people who happen to be modestly overweight....and does so with scant regard for evidence of effectiveness or causation.

Come on, certainly NOT the worst by any measure. McCain is pretty good for a republican in these end-times. Obama is practically brilliant. Look at his campaign. Its a model of efficiency and good work. The policy statements are all junk anyway. Who cares what is in the platforms? Obama is a smart person who knows what to say and what to do in a given situation. is that so bad? And McCain is not totally clueless either. Compare either one with Reagan or Carter or (god forbid) Bush...

There are two (or more) separate things going on here. In the "long run", whatever is more in sync with reality (whatever that may be..and its probably a moving target) will do better. In the short term (and we are dead in the long run), many of us may see our lives and our children's lives adversely affected by fascists brandishing Islamist, Christianist or Hindu nationalist ideologies (to name a random few). I do think there is a point (and not too faraway a point) at which the apparent ideological advantages of Islamism (solidarity, mass mobilization, strength of commitment to the cause) are outweighed by the deadweight of medieval laws and outdated organizational ideas ("caliphate", "qazi courts") that come along with the advantages. Leaving aside any moral issues, there is NO example where Islamists were able to organize a modern state and make it work in the sense of producing tons of goods, efficiently mobilizing resources, etc. etc. Dubai is not an islamist state, its disneyland with the death penalty, sustained by the same organizational and cultural tools that power western capitalism in general. Iran is a good example of how a semi-successful Islamist state also has to be semi-modern...the parts that work are Universities, elections, courts, internets, armies, organizations...and there is little that is medieval or specifically "islamic" about any of them.

The Rock

Or you have to wait a couple months and they treat it like a chore.

but many "fall away." so perhaps some could be in a position to catch these falling stars? 
 
But did not Christ intone thou to put such poor lost sheep on thine shoulders and carry them back to the warm bosom of the Lord?

Well it's a proven strategy - most campus Christian organizations are disproportionately female. But doesn't the fact that they're Christian (and take it seriously) kinda get in the way? I found the trampolining club a better route.

e.g., who is their virgin of the guadaloupe? 
 
Our Lady of Knock?  
 
Re: Celtic Catholicism - The festival of Samhain. Or the inspired evolution of Banshee's from pagan 'spirits of nature' to 'fallen angels.' Or the historical controversy over whether St Brigid (Ireland's hottest Saint) really existed or is an amalgam of Celtic deities. The adaptiveness of Catholicism is pretty good. 
 
i was a member of the korean american christian fellowship  
 
WTF? The honey's I presume?

Europe is not the US, migrating from Poland to the UK is not the same as migrating from New York to Florida. I can't just pick up my bags and head for Germany, it's a whole different culture and language to get used to.

Ha! Dan I was googling around and came across this headline in the Sunday Times: Pets pay price of Polish exodus.

then immigration is going be essential to supply the workforce just to care for the old folks in their nursing homes. 
 
France imports large numbers of North Africans who just go on welfare straight away, as there are no jobs in France. So the opposite is actually happening, the older French are taking care of the younger Muslims. France purposely seeks the global idle, not the kind of characters you'd want inheriting a civilization, or looking after you in your old age for that matter. I'd love to have a proper read of how the French chatterati justifies this, given that they can't use the 'doing jobs we won't do' argument. Probably a lot of feigned, secular Christian emoting. 
 
The muslim component is growing because of rapid immigration too 
 
Conservative Catholic Poles are spreading out over the continent at an enormous rate since their accession to the EU in 2004. In Britain 500,000 Poles arrived, legally, within the space of 18 months, and Catholic churches are now over capacity. There has been barely a peep from the population at large, with most papers etc obsessed with non-European migration. So the type of immigrant matters a whole lot.

The immigrants are an enormous demographic safety net for America. 
 
My point was - America is becoming Latin America at a much quicker rate than Europe is becoming North Africa, so why would Europeans want to go there? 
 
in terms of power politics 6 million in todays world would make you a very minor power indeed. 
 
And? Ireland has a population of 4 million, we're pretty happy! Who gives a s**t if your country becomes a 'minor power'? In fact I prefer 'minor powers' to vast, incoherent quasi-Empires. 
 
DarwinCatholic 
 
Italy & Spain have the lowest birthrates in Europe, along with some of the highest levels of religiosity (as in social religiosity - the 'priests watching what you do' kind) France has shown that in countries where 'career women' are the norm things like adequate childcare provisions, paid maternity leave etc are more important for the birthrate than religiosity (In Italy & Spain childcare is typically the perogative of the extended family, usually grandparents, and women are afraid to have babies) Germany and Austria have implemented more conservative measures than the Nordics or France, encouraging mothers to stay at home with the children. I view having children as a biological urge everybody has, not something implanted by religion/culture. 
 
and incidentally probably reproducing at a much higher rate than the average given their attitudes about birth control 
 
I have met many conservative catholics in Europe, and at this stage in the game none have any qualms about birth control. I've seen no evidence of this.

So the problem mankind faces is what are we going to do with the European wilderness, when the ageing humans that formerly inhabited it die off, leaving their pet dogs, cats and farm animals to inherit the earth? 
 
Europe got along pretty ok in the past. Britain's pop was just under 6 million in 1603.  
 
And also don't forget, many Europeans of talent are going to take one look at the collapsing situation and flee to America. 
 
Aren't like half of children under five in the US now minorities? The white birth rate in the US is similar to Europe's, indeed it might actually be less than the French one. 
 
The one child policy is going to have to be unwound at some point or else the future of China is just as doubtful as that of Europe. 
 
I don't want to sound rude but that's sheer hyperbole, given that we're talking about a nation of well over a billion souls, and I severely doubt the ethnocentric Chinese would ever dream of solving the problem with mass immigration.